Megyn Kelly used her podcast to urge listeners to “give President Trump a chance” on Thursday amid criticism over his tariff war.
“There’s no way he’s going to let a bunch of economic pain rain down on the country for the next three and a half years without doing anything about it,” Kelly insisted. “He’s talking about short-term pain for long-term gain.”
Kelly, who received $30 million from NBC to complete her contract when she was terminated halfway through it in 2018, said that complaining about higher prices as a result of these tariffs is “the easy argument to make.”
Even though economists are predicting “all doom and gloom” including “stagflation, where inflation goes up and the economy slows and eventually we could see job losses,” Kelly said, “Why don’t we give him a chance? Why don’t we see how this changes things?” After all, Kelly said, “Trump is of a different ilk” who really “cares” about “working class manufacturers of America.”
The issue is “near and dear to his heart,” she explained, so why can’t Americans just suffer for a while? “We need to be patient with the president who ran very much on this and deserves a shot.”
Cars are likely to have some of the biggest price hikes now that Trump’s tariffs have taken effect—with one major manufacturer already laying off hundreds of workers. But Trump told NBC News he “couldn’t care less” if car manufacturers raise their prices. “I hope they raise their prices,” he said, “Because if they do, people are gonna buy American-made cars.”
Kelly echoed his laissez-faire comment as she ignored the tariffs’ real-life implications on Thursday.
“There are certain regulations, for example in Japan, that make it virtually impossible for us to sell certain cars there because we will never pass the regulations,” she said. Instead of harping over whether Trump’s tariffs are fair, she told her listeners to wonder, “Is that fair? Is it hard to get a Japanese car in America?”
“He’s trying to rectify the defenders of the free trade world,” she said. In sum, you shouldn’t worry so much about “unfairness” of inflated prices, Kelly told her listeners, “Net-net, we’re still the strongest economy in the world.”
Thursday marked the biggest single day stock market drop since March of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S.
